Multi-million pound windfall will help fix Norfolk’s roads - tell us where you think it should be spent

Transport bosses are hoping a government windfall will mean an extra £3m to £4m can be spent to fix Norfolk’s damaged roads.

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And Norfolk County Council is also preparing to lobby the government once again to secure even more cash to help repair drought, frost and rain-damaged Fen roads.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin announced at the weekend that an extra £140m would be made available to help repair roads hit by weather damage.

While Norfolk County Council has yet to get notification of how much that will mean for the county, a multi-million pound boost looks likely.

Tom McCabe, interim director of environment, transport and development at Norfolk County Council, said: “We have not had official confirmation as to how much Norfolk County Council will get, but we hope it will be something between £3m to £4m, which will need to be spent on highways maintenance before the summer.

“As soon as we get details, we will propose how we will spend the money, because we need to get it spent fairly quickly.”

Last week, the Labour/Liberal Democrat administration agreed it could only afford to spend £25.4m on structural maintenance of the highways network, with the authority looking to make £189m of cuts and savings over the next three years.

The council agreed to cut £1m from the highways maintenance budget, as part of the Putting People First Consultation.

Officers had warned: “There is likely to be some deterioration of highway condition as the annual need is calculated to be in the region of £36m to maintain current condition levels.”

Spending will include £1.6m to resurface principal roads, just under £1m to surface B roads and £3m on surface dressing on C roads.

Councillors had asked whether the extra cash could be used to patch up the Fen roads, which have been particularly badly damaged in recent years.

A funding bid from Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire county councils, plus Peterborough City Council, for extra cash for those roads failed in 2012.

But council bosses revealed they, and other councils, are planning to renew that appeal.

Mr McCabe said: “We are in the process of submitting further evidence to the government on the maintenance of the Fen Roads.”

• Which roads in Norfolk do you think are most in need of repairs? Let us know your views by writing, giving full contact details, to Letters Editor, Prospect House, Rouen Road, Norwich NR1 1RE.

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12 comments

Well now lets see: how about you stop spending money on stuff that doesn't need to be done... The dereham road bowthorpe end- you have just stuck up barriers across the mid section which I think obstruct view and go against everything that you learn in your hazard perception test.
IT must of cost us The taxpayer at least £20,000 and guess what you had them asphalt the ground around the barriers? it will never be walked on and is a waste of our money.
and then to top that off you have hired containers that were used for it STILL there costing us money every week. for nothing. just because you are that bad at organising that you cannot bloody organise to have them removed..
what will you do with the extra 3m? put it in your pocket or waste it on rubbish like normal.
I spent time in Zimbabwe- you know that 3rd world place! and we reported one pothole in the road next day it had been filled- so that is just an example of how rubbish our local authority are.

A few weeks ago, Chloe Smith issued a pamphlet in Norwich North to the effect that the clueless Borat would table an alternative budget protecting expenditure on roads. Of course he never did because he and his group are utterly inept without the officers to pull their strings. You see, Smith is not called the (mis)leader of NFJ for nothing...

The extra money will be very handy for the NDR and, of course, potholes outside councillors homes.
I really cannot see it benefiting anyone else. Pothole work in the rural areas seems to consist of a man with a bucket and a trowel throwing a lump of tarmac in the hole and then stamping it in with his foot. Five cars later and it's gone!!! Like the council, useless.

Bad surface then slow down. Drive to the conditions.
Why would parallel ruts affect motorcycles. They can only follow one at a time! It's the smaller cars that move from left to right in and out of the ruts that are a problem.
But then this is easilly fixed if we all move to the land of milk and honey called Zimbabwe. They may beat you and jail you for no reason. There may be no food, and their economy is in melt down, but they know how to deal with pot holes.

£3m to £4m won't touch the surface (excuse the pun) I'm afraid, as they have been neglected for far too long. It is more likely to be set aside for the NDR, which seems to be the only road that matters to these charlatans.

Drove along the A47 between Dereham and Swaffham last weekend and it was in a dreadful condition, my young daughter in the back of the car actually asked why was the road so bumpy? For the main road east-west through the county this has got to be a priority to sort out.

How about spending it on just about every road in Norfolk. Stop patching them up and putting on surface dressing that just comes off after a year and build proper road surfaces like they have throughout the rest of the civilised world!

Duel the Acle straight! Not only was the condition of the road dreadful and yes I know it's being resurfaced right now but the biggest problem is how long it takes to get into Yarmouth from Lingwood. Horrendous

The Swaffham bypass is developing parallel ruts, which must be nasty for motorcyclists. But I would say a priority is the A10 Ouse bank between Brandon Creek and Littleport. Very very uneven from subsidence,lots of lorry traffic, quite nasty. Maybe some should be put aside every year to work on raising the causeway across Welney wash too.